Dow Chemical company Operation Aurora

Dow Chemical was named among more than 30 major US companies — including Google, Adobe, and Northrop Grumman — targeted by the Operation Aurora intrusion campaign in 2009. The campaign was attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored group (later linked to the Elderwood platform) and used an Internet Explorer zero-day to gain initial access to corporate networks.

Industrial process trade secrets and source code repositories were among the targeted assets. Public disclosures focused on Google; the scope of data exfiltrated from Dow has not been publicly detailed.